Buying craft beer kegs in Maharashtra as a bar or restaurant

The chain a keg follows

Beer in Maharashtra leaves a brewery only after excise duty is paid and a transport pass is raised on the state's SCM portal. For commercially brewed beer the usual route is:

1. A brewery holding a Form BRL licence makes and kegs the beer in bond.
2. Duty is paid and the kegs move under a pass to an FL-I licensee, the wholesale trade licence for foreign liquor, which in Maharashtra includes beer.
3. The wholesaler invoices and delivers to your FL-III, FL-IV or Form E premises, again under a pass.

Each step leaves paper. Your copy of the invoice and the pass is what you will show an inspector who asks where a keg came from, so file them the day the keg arrives. The State Excise licence list sets out what each of these licences permits.

Brewpubs, micro-breweries and the difference that matters

The rules amended on 15 February 2024 split small craft breweries in two. A restaurant-brewery is a brewing area within licensed premises, the brewpub most people picture. It sells for consumption there. A micro-brewery is a standalone craft beer plant. Both are capped at fifteen lakh litres a year, and both may issue craft beer to holders of retail licences for on or off consumption, in casks, kegs, bottles, cans or growlers.

So the answer to "can I buy kegs from that brewpub down the road?" is: often yes, if its licence is one of these two and it has registered the brand and keg size. Confirm the supply route with the excise office. Ask to see the licence before you plan a menu around its beer. Most craft taps in non-brewing venues are still filled from commercial breweries and contract-brewed brands sold through wholesalers.

Contract-brewed brands

Many craft labels you see in Mumbai and Pune bars are brewed under contract. The brand owner supplies the recipe, the host brewery holds the licence and the labels are registered under the host. For your purposes this is ordinary commercial beer: it comes through a wholesaler, it carries the normal mild or strong duty and it is as legal as a national lager.

The thing to check is consistency. A contract brand that moves between host plants can taste different from batch to batch. Ask which plant brews it and whether that has changed this year.

Keg labels and registration

Every label a brewery uses must be approved by the Commissioner of State Excise. The beer rules also require the guaranteed fluid contents of each bottle, cask or keg to be shown on the label in bold. In practice each pack size of each brand is registered separately. A beer registered in cans is not automatically cleared to ship in a 30 litre keg.

Before you print a menu, ask the supplier to confirm that the exact keg size you will receive is registered for the current year. Ask too how the keg's price has been declared and registered, since that number drives your cost per glass.

What to ask a supplier

• Cold chain: is the beer stored and trucked cold from the brewery to your door? Unpasteurised craft beer that spends a day in a hot truck in May will not taste the way the brewer meant.
• Keg type and coupler: which fitting do the kegs use? Will they lend or install the coupler?
• Line service: do they clean your lines, how often and who pays? Our guide to draught line cleaning covers what a proper clean involves.
• Keg returns and deposits: how much deposit per keg, how empties are collected and what happens to a lost keg.
• Shelf life: the packed date, the best-before and how long a keg lasts once tapped.
• Payment terms: advance, cash on delivery or credit? What happens to a keg that turns before it is finished.
• Minimum order: a four-tap bar cannot take a pallet of each beer.

Order for what you will pour

The mistake new venues make is ordering for the tap list they want, not the beer they will sell. A 30 litre keg of a hazy IPA that sells eight glasses a night on weekdays sits on for two weeks. The flavour fades before the keg runs out. Start with fewer taps and rotate one. Use a fortnight of sales to set your par levels.

That is a forecasting job. It is where the profit of a tap programme is won or lost. Rules change, so confirm the supply route, registration and pricing with your excise office or licensing adviser. This guide is not legal advice.